Corals are protected by a hard, limestone skeleton, but bumphead parrot fish bite straight through rock and coral with their powerful jaws. These fish erode the coral and the material they swallow comes out the other end as fine sand. On a single reef they can produce tonnes of sand every year. This soft sand forms beautiful tropical white beaches and eventually creates tropical islands!
A sinister crown of thorns starfish slides on to a coral, spreads its stomach over the polyps and digests them whole. The only protection
a coral can hope for is a small crab which takes up residence in the coral's branches and uses its pincers to nip the starfish to see it
off.
Night on the reef is a tough time. Moray eels slither around the corals hunting by smell. Whitetip sharks use their electrical sense to
trace any movement in the sleeping fish. Feeding frenzies disturb the otherwise eerie calm of the reef.
An entire reef can be destroyed by one big storm: hundreds of years of growth wiped out in a few hours. But out at sea, new life continues
to develop and, in time, coral larvae return to colonise the rubble and a new reef grows on the wasteland.
1:50 Coral |
3:30 Christmas Tree Worm |
4:10 Grouper? |
4:10 Hawksbill Turtle? |
4:10 Cleaner Wrasse |
4:55 Whale Sharks |
6:55 pigments seen in UV light |
9:00 Butterflyfish |
9:15 Coral polyps emerge at night |
10:10 Coral polyps fight |
11:40 Crown-of-Thorns Starfish |
11:40 Sangogani Crab? |
13:25 Humphead Parrotfish |
15:25 Sooty Tern?s |
16:40 Jacks |
16:40 Silversides |
17:55 Snapping Shrimp? queen |
19:00 Polychete Worm |
20:40 Red-mouthed Grouper? |
20:40 Dartfish |
21:15 Lionfish |
22:25 Harlequin Shrimp |
22:25 Seastar |
23:45 Powder Blue Tang |
23:45 Convict Tangs |
26:15 Basket Star |
27:40 Mottled Ray |
28:50 Oceanic Whitetip Shark |
31:40 Brown Surgeon Fish |
33:10 Fusiliers |
32:55 Banded Pipefish |
32:55 courtship dance |
36:45 Flamboyant Cuttlefish |
38:00 Humpback Whale |
40:00 Coral spawning |
43:20 Atlantic Lobster?s |
45:05 Reef destruction from storm |
|
|